


When Fate Stumbles

by villainsarebetter (darkling59)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: ...sort of, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Misunderstandings, The world without magic, post-4A divergence, season 4 fix it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 10:31:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4134180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkling59/pseuds/villainsarebetter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Rumpelstiltskin reaches New York after being banished from Storybrooke, he has a choice to make: Bae’s apartment or the elixir of the wounded heart. A random quirk of chance as he’s deciding leads him to reorder his priorities</p><p>And the future takes a step to the left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Fate Stumbles

_Chapter One_

Rumpelstiltskin arrived in New York on a bus early in the morning a few days after his exile. He was pressed between bleary eyed commuters and hungover twenty-somethings recovering from the weekend. The (formerly) wealthy pawnbroker knew he looked out of place – his clothes were obviously expensive and what few adornments he had on him (cufflinks, wedding band) were high quality – and made sure to keep to himself in a corner seat away from potential pickpockets, staring quietly out the window with a distant expression.

He had a lot to think about.

Being banished from Storybrooke had nearly destroyed him – literally. The shields he had in place to protect his heart from the Dark One’s curse collapsed without magic to feed them, and he could already feel his heart stuttering in his chest. On top of that, he was neither young nor fit and his crippled leg made the hike to the nearest gas station a long and excruciating experience. Had the weather been slightly colder, hypothermia would have felled him within a few hours. To say nothing of the other risks inherent in hiking in the dark, alone, in the middle of nowhere.

To be perfectly honest, anyone else in his condition subjected to such circumstances probably would have died. 

The only reason he didn’t succumb to the wilderness was because he was used to fighting the odds for survival – he’d weathered worse from his body when returning from the war where he’d crushed his leg (two and a half weeks hobbling on rough dirt roads with the bones still shifting in his ankle, when every person he encountered greeted him with sneers if he was lucky, physical attacks if he wasn’t) and he’d been managing his heart for three hundred years; he was accustomed to the sensation of being overtaken by the slow rot of the Dark One’s curse. Once Belle left and he was able to pull himself together enough to crawl out of the middle of the road, he put one foot in front of the other and doggedly did his best to survive. No matter that it looked impossible; he’d beaten impossible odds before. He kept telling himself that the entire first day as he hobbled slowly to the gas station and scraped together what little money he had in his pockets to buy a bus ticket.

Now he had an important choice to make: Bae’s apartment or Walsh’s shop? On the one hand, he could rest and recover at Bae’s place, take some time to come to terms with his situation. On the other, the wizard of Oz had somehow had magic in this world (enough to turn into a winged monkey at least) and he needed a potion from Oz to help his heart. There was no guarantee that it was at Walsh’s shop, or in this world at all, but he thought it was unlikely such a powerful and potentially useful potion would have been left behind.

It _needed_ to be there. If it wasn’t…

He might be a villain, but he wouldn’t wish the unleashed essence of the Dark One, unfettered by a human soul, on anyone. Not even the world without magic, or those fools in Storybrooke.

Or Belle.

He ruthlessly shoved that thought away. If he started thinking about his True Love, about what he’d lost ( _thrown away_ ) and would never be able to regain, he doubted he’d have the will to push himself on. Even now, simply huddling in a corner to wallow in his own misery and fade away to nothing felt like an attractive option.

But dying in the world without magic didn’t necessary mean the essence of the Dark One would go with him. There were still things he needed to do and contingency plans he needed to put in place before he let go completely.

The bus reached his stop and he made his slow, laborious way down the aisle and the steps, ignoring the alternately pitying and annoyed looks of the other commuters in response to his cane, and limped away without looking back, mind shying away from thinking about the past to focus entirely on the choice ahead of him.

At the nearest corner, he reached a crossroads.

To the left, Bae’s apartment. A chance to recover from the physical and emotional turmoil he’d suffered and to take comfort in his son’s possessions. He might even take the chance to contact Regina’s thief for help on his venture. A rest and an accomplice to help acquire the elixir could mean the difference between success and failure. And he couldn’t take the chance of failure.

To the right, Walsh’s furniture store ‘The Wizard of Oak’, where the last of Oz’s potions were stored. There was no question as to whether or not he needed to break in and soon, _very_ soon. He could feel his heart stuttering in his chest even as he considered his decision – but rushing in half-cocked would be worse than not making the attempt. If he accidentally tripped an alarm…well, that would be it. He probably wouldn’t even make it to jail before his heart failed completely.

He stood at the crossroads silently, eyes distant and hands folded over the head of his gas station-grade cheap plastic cane. The Dark One was weighing costs and benefits in his mind, balancing the scales to find the highest chance of success. Well-hidden desperation and fear were pushed away with the ease of long practice, but he could not purge them from his mind completely.

Finally, he turned decisively to the left, reasoning that time to prepare for his heist could not go amiss, provided he visited ‘The Wizard of Oak’ within the next few hours.

He barely made it two steps before his heart seized painfully in his chest.

His cane skidded on the concrete sidewalk as he suddenly jerked off center, free hand clutching at the left side of his chest, and he barely managed to stumble into the side of a building before he could lose his balance entirely and fall to the ground. Other pedestrians glared at him for blocking their path or eyed him with concern, but he ignored them all in favor of trying to maintain his breathing and heart-rate even while instinctively scrambling for his missing magic to stabilize his heart. His helplessness summoned his desperation and fear back full force and they gnawed at his mind as he tried frantically to control his body. He sagged heavily against the wall, panting harshly and trembling as the pain vanished just as swiftly as it had appeared. 

A warning, then. He had even less time than he’d thought and none to waste. Still shaking and unsteady, he turned his feet in the opposite direction.

If he made it to Bae’s apartment, he wouldn’t survive long enough to leave again. And even if he failed at breaking into ‘The Wizard of Oak’ because of poor planning, he would be dead before the police could do anything to him.

The elixir had to come first.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, this was a chapter of ‘Reunions’ but it grew out of control and I decided not to pare it down and instead post it as a separate fic. This chapter is Rumple’s POV right after being banished, next will be Belle’s POV a few months down the line.
> 
> I’ve got lots of ideas I want to address with this fic, but the current sticking point for me is how ‘there is no magic in the world without magic’ is about as accurate as ‘characters can’t come back from the dead’ in ouat. Rumple’s going to be making quite a few discoveries while he learns to live in our world…and the folks back in Storybrooke are going to be on a learning curve of their own in the meantime.
> 
> Also, I'm now on tumblr under the name villainsarebetter! I'm planning to post my fanfiction there as well, plus some tumblr-exclusive stuff.


End file.
